3 folders

Agency History/Biographical note:

Scope and Content:
This series includes an orginial letter by Dickinson written to her friend and Amherst Academy classmate Abiah Root on November 6, 1847. The letter reflects Dickinson's first experiences as a student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and describes her grueling examinations, studies, daily schedule, and domestic work. She writes that although she was homesick upon arrival, "I am now contented and quite happy, if I can be happy when absent from my dear home and friends." She also comments on the faculty: "One thing is certain and that is that Miss Lyon and all the teachers seem to consult our comfort and happiness in everything they do and you know that is pleasant." This series also contains copies of all of her letters written as a Mount Holyoke student as printed in "The Letters of Emily Dickinson," edited by Thomas H. Johnson and published in 1958.

Cite as:

Access Restrictions: Unrestricted

Series List:


• Correspondence , 1847-1848 , 3 folders
• Collection of Poems , 1988 , 1 folder
• Subject Files , 1962- , 8 folders
• Writings About Dickinson , 1924- , 3 boxes
• Reproductions of Photographs and Other Images , ca. 1960s- , 4 folders 

Copyright © 1998, Mount Holyoke Colleg e. This page created by LITS and maintained by P. Carini. Last modified on

7 boxes

Agency History/Biographical note:
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts to Edward Dickinson, a lawyer and treasurer of Amherst College, and Emily Norcross Dickinson. She graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847 then attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year, 1847-1848. Benjamin F. Newton, a law student in her father's office, and Henry Vaughan, an Amherst College student, influenced her literary development by encouraging her to write. By the late 1850s, Dickinson had written hundreds of poems. She became more and more reclusive and only a few of her poems were published during her lifetime (the first edition of her poems was published in 1890). She died in Amherst on May 15, 1886, at the age of fifty-five.

Scope and Content:
The Emily Dickinson Collection contains correspondence, a collection of poems, subject files, writings about Dickinson, and reproductions of photographs and other images. The bulk of this collection consists of secondary sources concerning Emily Dickinson and dating from 1924 to the present. Most of this material is written in the English language; the collection also includes writings in Japanese and other languages. Of particular note is a letter that Dickinson wrote on November 6, 1847, while she was a student at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. The letter discusses her examinations and studies, Mary Lyon and the teachers, her schedule and domestic work, and the food at the school. There are also published copies of other letters that Dickinson wrote while at Mount Holyoke in 1847-1848. The collection of poems, published in 1988, contains some of Dickinson's works translated into the Estonian language. The subject files  include documents concerning the Emily Dickinson International Society, the Emily Dickinson postage stamp, and films, music, novels, plays, and poems relating to Dickinson. The writings about Dickinson consist of books, articles, newspaper clippings, and published and unpublished papers. These writings discuss a wide variety of topics, including Dickinson's time at Mount Holyoke, her health, forgeries of her poems, and the history of the one known daguerreotype of her. Several clippings also relate to the celebration at Mount Holyoke College commemorating the 150th anniversary of her birth in 1980. The reproductions of photographs and other images include a print of the 1847 daguerreotype of Dickinson, copies of portraits based on the daguerreotype and on an 1840 portrait of Dickinson and her siblings, and a reproduction of an 1848 silhouette of Dickinson and her family.

Cite as: Emily Dickinson Collection, Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, South Hadley, MA.

Access Restrictions: Unrestricted

Series List:


• Correspondence , 1847-1848 , 3 folders 

Copyright © 1998, Mount Holyoke Colleg e. This page created by LITS and maintained by P. Carini. Last modified on November 12, 2002